Listen to the largest and loudest cricket in the world

The giant burrowing cricket is reputedly the largest and loudest cricket in the world with a powerful, continuous buzzing call that can be heard over one and a half kilometers away. The video shows a male giant burrowing cricket, hesitant at first, getting out of his burrow to perform his extremely noisy and high-pitched call. The video captures how the insect produces his sound by rubbing his wings together. At the base of the forewing, a thick, ridged vein acts as a file. The upper surface of the forewing is hardened, like a scraper. When the male giant cricket calls for a mate, he lifts his wings and pulls the file of one wing across the scraper of the other. The thin, papery portions of the wings vibrate, amplifying the sound. “During a recent camping trip to the Kruger National Park, we found ourselves overwhelmed by the noise of these insects at nighttime,” the filmer said. “Each male’s call would last up to three minutes at a time,” the filmer added. “With hundreds of these crickets going at once every 15 minutes, there was not much sleep for anyone in the camp that night.”